Life of a Web Engineer Intern at TWDC
About Me
I was a senior undergraduate when applying for this position in Carousell. At that time, I was eager to demonstrate my abilities, which I learnt from the past three years, and was also excited about making contributions in a big company. Carousell was a place that not only lets me apply my knowledge and skills, but also learn skills I didn’t have. It’s so lucky to have this internship at the very last year of college.
Life in Carousell
As mentioned previously, my time in Carousell not only satisfied my desire to work on and complete real products, but it also taught me a lot of hard and soft skills.
I can still remember during my onboarding, I was assigned to find and fix a bug on the website. It didn’t take too long to detect a bug, but when I tried to diagnose the problem, I was overwhelmed by the code base, which I’d never thought could be so complicated. Thanks to my mentor Cheng Hua and my colleague Ayao, I was able to understand the architecture and the logic of the whole code base. They did not just helped me solve the problem, but instead, they spent time teaching me how to use debug tools like components and profiler, and shared their standard debugging process with me. I genuinely learnt a lot from them.
Carousell has a culture where every opinion will be taken into consideration. Here I started to try expressing my opinions about tasks whenever I have concerns. It’s comfortable to share my thoughts in the company, because even silly ideas will still be seriously reviewed. Sometimes, better solutions came up during discussions. If it were not for Carousell, I might not have the chance to exchange thoughts with people who have years of experience.
People and Environment in Carousell
The very first person I would like to mention is Cheng Hua, my mentor. Cheng Hua is always helpful and responsive during discussions, and I learnt a lot from him. For example, we realised that extending the size might take huge effort in adjusting some fields, so he reported the issue back to the PM to confirm the requirements. And after qualifying the requirements, he advised that I can solve the issue by giving the margin negative values, which is a “hacky” method I would never have thought of. It’s simple to be implement and also effective, achieving good balance on both sides.
My supervisor Steven was very supportive. Though he was busy, he always showed concern on whether I had adapted well in the company and asked if anything was going alright. When things went beyond my control, he would help me with them. Because of his supportiveness, I felt safe to try things and to challenge myself with tasks.
When it comes to the culture of Carousell, the kindness of everyone must be considered. Within and among teams, each person showed great willingness to help. It’s encouraged to ask questions in Carousell, and there’s not a question that would be regarded stupid. Communication with people was comfortable and helpful. I learnt the importance and effectiveness of asking questions here. Whenever there were difficulties, I felt less shy to ask for opinions from other senior engineers.
Team-bonding and weekly sync are also memorable events for me. Team-bonding is an event with an aim to enhance the bonds between each team member. I attended the year-end team-bonding where we went to play a laser gun battle. Everyone had fun then, and we got to know each other better because of it. As for the weekly sync, we always shared about what we’ve done last weekend before entering into the work discussion. In Carousell, there’s no need to worry about not being able to make friends, as both events brought strong connections for every member.
Conclusion
The internship brought me more than I expected. Besides experience in frontend development, I also gained courage to start a conversation about the problems I was facing. More importantly, the employees here create a friendly atmosphere for people like me who want to improve themselves. The time in Carousell is worth it.
